As Australia goes into assorted paroxysms about the news on Australia's Gauantanamo detainee, David Hicks and his first court appearance, I slink into a corner of despair. I am sick and tired of hearing about this foolish would-be terrorist who now has pled guilty to supporting a terrorist organisation.
I think the American Government has been yet more obnoxious than Hicks in insisting on his lengthy and inhumane incarceration at Guantanamo, which is the very sort of hell hole of torment from which the US purports to want to rid the world. Its' treatment of Hicks has only served to turn him into a celebrated case - and, doubtless, a seriously traumatised nut case.
I venture to suggest that this whole shambles might have been avoided if David Hicks had stayed at school and learned a thing or two. He left school at 14, expelled - a raw boy with comic book dreams of being a warrior. He replaced school learning with gun learning, drugs, car theft and sex. He had two children by the time he was 20. At 24 he was off in Albania joining the Kosovo Liberation Army. Any fight would do. He tried to get into the Australian army, but it insists on education among its recruits. So he turned to Islam, headed off to Pakistan to be trained and the next thing, he was bragging he had met Osama bin Laden 20 times.
He was a pretty reprehensible young man.
But then the Americans mistreated him and denied him his rights in that vile detention centre - and he has been headlines ever since.
This man who sought to fight against his own people is now a cause celebre. Not a day goes by without mention of his name. He has turned into a major political issue - so much so that the forthcoming Australian Federal election is destined to be waving the flag of his case in a frenzy of point-scoring. It is going to go on and on.
And we are all punished for a school drop-out's stupidity.
3 comments:
I agree with you - I think 'entirely' - especially the bit about him being about as dumb as dog s**t and 'celebrated' only because of his shoddy treatment...
However a lot of us non-political folk have been asking the same question for years now: If John Howard is such a US fan/ally, how come they've never bothered to acknowledge his utter devotion and send DH - aka Clueless Bogan - back home?
Alexander Downer doesn't help matters either in his continued bland denials of DH getting a fair trial and not showing any signs of mental strain.... It's a wonder he can sleep at night.
It wouldn't have taken their 'interrogators' about ten seconds to deduce that he has the brain size of a blanched almond and is likely now to spend the rest of his life in a stoned haze sitting on the front verandah of his housing trust unit... If they'd thought for another second they could have showed this loser back home to us to fund him on welfare, beer and chips for the rest of his pathetic, little life
I agree he was a moron for wanting to be a soldier. Now let's try and persuade 'civilized' countries that soldiering is not only stupid, but an unethical livelihood. But that would get millions of people tortured by the USA, would it not? Guantanamo couldn't hold them all.
As for having two children at 20, I fail to see why that should condemn Mr Hicks. I'm 54 with five grandkids aged 1 to 13. We all have a ball together. Throw me in jail and toss away the key!
All power, Milly Moo!
It sounds as if you were a devoted young parent, Pip. I don't think the same can be said for Hicks.
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